tar frustration (was Re: relative pathname question!)

[Paul Lew]

>From article <2858 at ttrdc.UUCP>, by levy at ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy):
> 
> All this points up a "feature" of tar which I find frustrating:  if I want
> tar to tape-archive a large number of files randomly scattered all over the
> file system (such as for an incremental backup) I'm SOL because tar wants
> to be told either a directory to completely search or file names to archive,
> via the argument list.  "cpio" circumvents this problem, since I can feed it
> a list of files, but what if I don't WANT to use cpio?

Check with public domain tar posted to comp.sources.unix volumn 12.  There is
a flag 'T' which will take filenames from a file.  I used it to save sources
files like:

	find $src -print | sed	\
		-e '/\.o$/d'	\
		-e '/\.a$/d'	\
		-e '/~$/d'	\
		-e '/\/core$/d'	\
		-e '/\/a\.out$/d' | tar -c -T -

It works out great.  If $src is an absolute pathname, this tar will remove
the leading /s when writing to tape.
-- 
Paul Lew			{oliveb,harvard,decvax}!gsg!lew	(UUCP)
General Systems Group, 5 Manor Parkway, Salem, NH 03079	(603) 893-1000